Main Menu

Search form

How The New York Times Explains Male Sex Scandals

Are women politicians just more nobel?

Anthony Weiner, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger — these are just the most recent examples of powerful men who have ruined their lives because of some inappropriate (or, in the case of Strauss-Kahn, allegedly much worse than inappropriate) sexual conduct.

Can you name a single woman politician caught in a similar sex scandal?

If not, why not?

The answer is so simple and so obvious that there should be no need to write a column on the subject. But, thanks to feminism and academia, the obvious has been declared untrue.

Take the article on this subject by New York Times Washington correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg. Titled "When It Comes to Scandal, Girls Won't Be Boys," Stolberg begins her answer to the question as to why powerful men, but not powerful women, are involved in sex scandals with this disclaimer: "It would be easy to file this under the category of 'men behaving badly,' to dismiss it as a testosterone-induced, hard-wired connection between sex and power (powerful men attract women) ... ."

Of course, what Stolberg dismisses as the reason is precisely the reason. Power (and money and fame) seduces women in the same way women's bodies and faces seduce men. And, unless men exert major efforts to control their sexual nature, they will use their power (or money or fame) to obtain sex with a variety of women.

There are only two things that stop powerful and famous men from sleeping with available women. The first is a strong value system (that is, a sense of obligation to their wives and/or their religion's power over them). The second is an overwhelming fear of getting caught. In either case, these things must be coupled with powerful self-control.

Yes, Stolberg, men — the least powerful as much as the most powerful — are "hard-wired" to sleep with as many women as they can. The only difference between the governor of California and a male sanitation worker is that the former has far more opportunities.

But Stolberg, our well-educated New York Times correspondent, denies this basic reality about men's natures. Feminism 101 teaches the opposite of reality — that men and women have similar, if not identical, sexual drives. And therefore she dismisses the truth of the matter at the outset of her article.

But if it isn't male sexual nature, what is the New York Times reporter's feminist explanation for why sexual scandal is virtually a monopoly of powerful men?

"There may be something else at work: Research points to a substantial gender gap in the way women and men approach running for office.

Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw — all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected."

See? In her worldview, powerful women might be driven to bed good-looking men as much as powerful men are driven to bed good-looking women. But "research points" to another explanation for why they do not.

And what is that other reason? Stolberg quotes a fellow feminist.

"'The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody,' said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University."

Aha! Women politicians are more noble.

Later in her article, Stolberg reinforces — perhaps sensing that even New York Times readers might find the "women are more noble" than men explanation tough to take — her original denial that the issue is male sexual nature. She writes: "Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers, said her studies on adultery show that, at least under the age of 40, women are equally as likely to engage in it as men. She theorizes that perhaps women are simply more clever about not getting caught."

So, then, women politicians are not more noble than their male colleagues, just better at not getting caught!

But then Stolberg reverts to her original thesis by noting that "Dee Dee Myers, a press secretary to President Bill Clinton ... and the author of 'Why Women Should Rule the World,' surmises that male politicians feel invincible. It would be impossible, she said, to imagine Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, doing anything like what Mr. Weiner did."

Of course, it is impossible to imagine Nancy Pelosi doing anything like Anthony Weiner did. But not because powerful men think they are invincible and powerful women do not, but because of male sexual nature.

Powerful men are involved in sex scandals because they think they can get away with doing so, and because the drive to do what they did is so powerful they risk everything they cherish in life for it.